Race day!
Up we were at 2:45 am and on the bus by 3:15. We had no problem with transportation. A bus pulled up right about the time we walked out the front doors of POFQ and loaded quickly and off we went. One of my biggest complaints of the whole day though comes next…why do they drop you off so far away so then you herd to the staging area and then herd once again to the corrals?! I had walked close to 4,000 steps before my race ever started! We sat in the staging area for a bit once we got there, my dad had coffee and my sister and I ate Honey Stinger Waffles as pre-race fuel. Then we wandered the corrals once it opened and popped a squat in G until it was time to start. I did wait until the last minute to try the potty one more time and was standing outside our corral when the first group took off. Why they closed them off I have no idea, as many people were also making last minute breaks and hoping the fences all over the place. I did think it was interest the number of people I saw in A and B groups coming in late from staging and making the sprint to their corral to start on time.
We started probably 25-30 after the first gun but it didn’t seem too terribly long. We had decided that we planned to run intervals directly from the start, since my sister was nervous about being undertrained and didn’t want to burn her out too quickly by trying to run extra. So we did! As did everyone else. I have done many 5ks and a few 10ks in my life and never have I been surrounded by so many interval runners (with all their chimes and beeps to boot!). It was actually refreshing, as I’ve struggled with the “real runner” concept as I could probably never complete a half marathon or any distance really without walk breaks.
Soapbox --> Thanks to Jeff Galloway for making running and competing in road races acceptable for the masses! Say what you will about the “participation” medals and the high crowds, and I have my own opinions about those too, but in general I think its amazing that he has helped and encouraged so many people to get out there and try. I said it before that I’m competitive my nature and racing is the fun part of running for me, and his methods are what allow me and thousands of other people, to feel good about getting out there!
Back to the race…miles 1-5: AMAZING! I was feeling good, happy, chatty, loving the entertainment, world showcase with the music and the drama was awesome, studios with the characters both Disney and 501st, I just loved every minute of it. It was crowded and we definitely had to bob and weave but we were never forced to walk due to congestion or change our intervals. The pathway between boardwalk and Hollywood studios was not nearly as bad as I anticipated, though faster runners may have a different opinion as I saw a lot of sprinting off-road to get around people. But most of the time I felt like the people around me were moving at a similar pace and we all just got through it. The little touches like music and fog under the bridge were fun too!
Hit the 10k mark still feeling like a champ, though we had gone over the overpass which is quite a big hill in Arizona standards. Then I started to crumble mentally a bit. As I’m sure most of you have heard, entertainment dropped off of this section pretty significantly and at this point in the morning there wasn’t really anything to look at and the time spent in the DAK parking lot was pretty brutal from a boredom, aka all you have to think about is running, standpoint. But then you enter DAK about mile 8 and I perked up again. A wonderful volunteer filled up my handheld water bottle I carry which was awesome and cruising my way past Everest was pretty fun. I just love those flags! And then we left DAK…I made it to about mile 10 before I let myself really start to notice the pain in my ankles. My sister had grabbed some biofreeze from a med tent around mile 7 for her hip flexor and she said it actually did make a different so I hit the next one. I’ve never used biofreeze before but I was pretty impressed actually. I got some almost instant relief which helped me get my mind right. The only extra walk break we asked for came not long after when we hit the hill over the highway. (sidenote- this is a win for me mentally and physically bc I almost always have to take an extra break over 8 miles) Once we were over the hill we picked up the intervals again. We cruised along until we hit the dirt/gravel path where the crowds all had to squeeze back together. As I mentioned before we never had to drop our intervals because of people but things definitely got tight here. Saw my hubs and mom in the cheering section as we came into WWoS. It was nice that people started that early but I do wish they had let them stretch through from there through the finish. Crowd support for that last tenth (or more) is always super motivating in other races but unfortunately because of this course once we passed them there was no one again. I took a couple of sips of powerade at the last water station but this didn’t sit too well and I was ready to be done with the race at this point. But I crossed the finish line with my arms up and head high.
My sister’s knees were aching so we went straight to the self-treatment area, grabbed some bags of ice and she got them wrapped on. My dad and I just rubbed the ice up and down our legs. We stocked up on our goodies as we passed but I sure do wish runD had provided a bag or something. I already run with a water bottle, was trying to get my phone out so we could meet our peeps, then got handed a full bottle of water, full bottle of powerade, a snack box, and a banana. When you’re tired, limping and mentally drained, this is a lot of things to balance! We found my sister’s fiancé in the area right before you exit by the photographers so we took a group pic with our medals then went off to meet up with my hub and mom. We sat under a tree, rehashed what we saw and doctored ourselves with ice and bandaids for maybe 20 minutes but really had no reason to hang around much longer. Once we got to the bus lot, the line for POFQ was long but actually moved quickly and we were headed back with not too much wait.
